A blog about engagement and marketing

Facebook Connect and behavior

Facebook is many things, but it’s primarily a place rich in a data about me. If you’re friends with me, you know I’m married, when I was born, my favorite books, movies, TV shows, and even hobbies. A picture can be painted based on the groups I’ve joined, and the pages I’ve fanned.

The point being, this is some rich data. It’s easy for people like me to make that almost entirely private, but it’s also easy for me to offer it to a brand to make the experience richer.

What if brands could take this data, and let people interact with their site based on the data? The Museum of Modern Art is trying it with its MyMoma idea.

Here’s how it works. One goes here, to the My Day at Moma site. Enter the dates they plan to go to Moma. Then, they are given the option to create a profile with Moma, or simply login using Facebook. If they log in using Facebook, it uses the rich data in Facebook to make some suggestions. Here’s what it suggested for me:

Notice the Family tab that was generated for me. Based on the data in my Facebook profile, it knows I have kids based. The roll over message on the kids tab says: “Strollers Welcome – Bring the Kids!”

Ask yourselves this: when filling out a form online, would you tell someone like Moma that you had kids? Probably not.It kind of feels weird to tell Moma that detail.

And yet, this information helps them tailor my day for me. In fact, they should tailor their day different for than they would for someone who doesn’t have two little kids who have to be in bed by 7:30PM.

Facebook Connect is a free way to get people to interact with the content in just about any site. (Facebook gives it away, but you need programmers to constantly watch the page.)

But the upside is this: 200+ million people on Facebook have already told Facebook some of the things we need to know to make a customized experience for a potential client. If your brand can prove that knowing this data helps with the experience, then people will reward your brand.

Check out the Moma site. It’s a neat use of the technology, and it’s one way to use the content on Facebook without really needing to use Facebook.